Archive for January, 2012

Whew! It’s hard to believe that our last official construction update was posted almost six months ago, back when the house was still a plywood box topped with skeletal rafters.

We’ve come a long way, baby.

Since time has gotten the best of us, if you’re interested in following the step-by-step progress on the house, we invite you to check out our Construction Process photo album on facebook. Pictures speak louder than words, and we’ve added captions so you can track our work through the months of May through January and beyond.

If—like Christopher—you’re thinking about building your own tiny house or learning as you go, here are a few of our favorite blogs and sites that offer step-by-step photo albums and more in-depth D.I.Y. tiny house How Tos:

During the research phase for this project, we dug through countless websites to find other tiny house builders and dwellers that we could use as potential film subjects. We searched Tiny House Blog and Tiny House Design, and Tiny House Talk and good old Google and have been so grateful for the wealth of info available at our fingertips.

But still, there’s nothing quite like a print-and-paper book.

TINY HOMES: Simple Shelter by Lloyd Kahn

Lloyd Kahn sent us a copy of his “Tiny Homes; Simple Shelter” just after Christmas. At this point, Christopher and I were both feeling a bit exhausted by our Kickstarter campaign, work on the house, and a few back-to-back filming trips. Lloyd’s oversized, picture-heavy book delivered the just the inspirational kick that we needed.

“Woah, cool!” we both found ourselves exclaiming, separately, on different occasions, stationed on the couch under a pile of blankets while it snowed outside. Right. This was why we were making this film to begin with: because there are creative, pro-active, DIY geniuses out there who are redefining the way we live and build and inhabit our homes. Continue reading “The Two Tiny House Books on our Coffeetable.” »

Last summer, Christopher found a load of old barn wood advertised on Craigslist. The wood was cheap and being offered up in the mountains only about 30 minutes away, so we jumped into his truck and took an early morning drive to escape the lowland heat and pick up some lumber.

This was back in the early stages of building, when we didn’t exactly know what we would do with the wood. We just thought, “It’s cheap, good quality wood, and we’re building a house. So we’re bound to need it, right?”

After laying under a tarp for most of the summer, autumn and some of the winter, the barn wood was finally pulled out last week. We decided to use it for the tall interior wall on the south side of the house, to accent the lighter blue-stain pine walls that have already gone up.

The result is a pretty elegant looking wall, if we do say so ourselves, with roots right here in the mountains: